Senedd TV: Dental service in Wales debate

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00:00 first question is from Peter Fox.

00:02 Peter Fox, Minister for Dental Services and Care

00:05 What assessment has the Minister made of the adequacy of dental services?

00:09 The Minister for Dental Services and Care

00:12 I have acknowledged that access to dentistry is not where we would like it to be.

00:16 The changes we are making means NHS dentistry is becoming more accessible

00:20 to those who have historically struggled to gain access.

00:24 Over 250,000 new patients have received treatment since April 2022.

00:30 Thank you Minister for that answer.

00:35 Time after time again Members raise concerns about dental services

00:40 and you often repeat that your new contracts are increasing the number of first time NHS patients.

00:46 However, this is at the detriment to both dental services and the Welsh public

00:50 and distorts the reality of a service which is on its knees.

00:54 A practice in my constituency has recently reached out to highlight that

00:58 as a result of the new contract they are forced into a position

01:01 where thousands of existing patients are unable to even be considered for recall appointments.

01:07 Because of this the practice is now faced with a clawback of £155,000.

01:12 This is not an exception to the rule, this is the rule due to the lack of long term thinking.

01:19 Further dentists now pay for their lab fees personally but for complex lab work like dentures

01:26 the NHS remuneration does not cover this cost leaving the dentist out of pocket.

01:30 It is no wonder then that practices are having to increase private work

01:34 in order to carry on providing what NHS work they can.

01:38 Minister, what measures are you taking to specifically address recall appointment wait times?

01:45 Thanks very much. Well, I won't comment specifically on that particular case

01:51 but what I can tell you is that we have very deliberately developed a contract in terms of dental services

01:58 where we are focusing attention on the most urgent but also on the preventative aspects of dentistry

02:06 and on focusing the attention on people who have had difficulty in accessing NHS dentistry in the past.

02:15 Now what that does mean is that there is likely to be an impact on those who are waiting for a recall

02:24 but as I've said in this chamber before, in that sense I think it is important that there's a recognition

02:31 that we're following the NICE guidance on this and the NICE guidance suggests that if you have healthy teeth

02:38 you don't need a recall every six months, in fact you can go up to two years without having a recall.

02:43 That is what NICE is saying and you ask us to follow NICE most of the time

02:47 so I think it's really important that we are led by clinicians in this area

02:52 and we recognise that there is only a certain amount of money and we do have to target that

02:58 and that's why we are following that particular approach.

03:01 I think it is probably worth saying in relation to Clawback just generally,

03:06 it's a very different situation and agreement that we have with dentists compared to GPs for example.

03:17 The situation is that we pay dentists in terms of this contract in advance.

03:24 That doesn't happen anywhere else so obviously if they can't reach the contract that they agreed to

03:33 then I think you in particular, who want us to be responsible stewards of the public funds

03:41 would want us to understand that if they're not actually providing the service that they signed up to

03:48 then it's a responsibility on us as a government to make sure that we go and get that money back.

03:54 Adam Price

03:56 Last month

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